Friday Adventure on Mandy’s Farm

For those that haven’t heard already, I started a new farm job a month ago. (Wow, time has flown by! I thought it was only 3 weeks ago!) It’s been fun and challenging at times. But mostly enjoyable and doing what I love while getting paid. 

It’s called Mandy’s Farm (after the owner’s last name) and he has sheep, pigs, yaks, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese and is getting two donkeys in November. Since he works near the city during the week, he has hired me to take care of the animals. 

Anyways, this Friday was quite the adventure! 

I was trying to get the sheep to come get their feed. McGregor wasn’t listening very well, and decided to chase them.

 They spooked and jumped over the electric fence into the larger field where two of the two yaks are! 🤦‍♀️ 

And because I’m not supposed to be alone with the yaks, I had to get the tractor, which was over in the other far field with the rest of the yaks. They saw me start the tractor & all came over to investigate. Meanwhile, McGregor was on the other side of the fence by the gate, so they were curious about him too. I wasn’t sure how I’d get through the gate without the yaks escaping, but then realized that it opened towards the tractor, so I couldn’t just open it with the tractor bucket and try to sneak out. 

So I had to carefully backup between the newly installed posts for the catch pen, then go full speed over to the other gate in the pasture. I was able to get through & closed the gate just as the yaks caught up with me! 

Then, I realized that part of the “post pounder” on the tractor had been dragging along the ground. I tried for several minutes to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. I finally went back inside the tractor and found a lever that raised the whole assembly! 

Once that issue was resolved, I made my way through the pig pasture to the other gate. I parked the tractor and walked back to the barn to get their feed. While they were busy eating, I got through their gate. And all that was just to get the tractor, so I could get the sheep back inside their fence without risking being charged by the yaks! 

Thankfully the majority of the sheep came over when they saw me and the red feed bucket (though empty) and went inside a small fenced area that led to their paddock. 

But 3 didn’t follow the others. So I had to first fix the temporary electric fence that they’d knocked over in a few spots. Then, get the first batch of sheep back inside their paddock and lead them to the feed. 

Then, I walked back to the tractor to try to get the stragglers back inside the fence.

 Of course they wouldn’t jump the electric fence again, so I chased them back and forth with the tractor. Finally, I got them inside the other fenced area. I made the mistake of bringing McGregor with me, so he could help move them back inside their fence. He listened for awhile, but once we got closer, he took off & chased them again, so they squeezed back out of the gate! 🤨 This time, they ran through the yak field. By the time I caught up to them (because I had to walk back to the tractor), there was only one left outside the fence. The others had jumped back over. 

The remaining ewe was exhausted and decided to lay down under the tractor! I tried multiple ways to get her over the fence, but she refused. 

As I’m trying to get her out from under the tractor, one of the yaks is close by watching the whole thing. So I had to keep an eye out in case I needed to retreat to the tractor cab! 

Finally the last sheep found a wider opening in the electric fence and jumped back in.

I decided since I already had the tractor, I’d move the poultry again. Especially with wet weather in the forecast, I thought it’d be easier to do it when it was still nice outside. 

But when I moved the chicken pen, one of the PVC corners broke. I still was able to move it, but in the process it ripped some of the chicken wire. Sure enough, the chickens found the opening and got loose! After chasing sheep all morning, I didn’t want to chase chickens. So I quickly put some extra wire over the gap, but couldn’t find zip ties to secure it. So left one door ajar, so when Sab came up for the weekend, he could put them back inside once it was dusk. Besides, the chickens were having a blast finding treasures all over!

After I finished the rest of the chores, I had to go to Lutz in Oneonta to get a few bags of feed for Mandy’s Farm. Then pick up food waste, eat supper and change clothes before our Friday night prayer meeting. So my original plans to get done early & catch up with my farm chores, didn’t happen. But that’s life! Especially on a farm. 

But there’s always good moments too! 

This ram is a “big baby” since he was a bottle baby. So he loves being scratched under his chin. His tail even wags! Lol 

And I even took a selfie with him! 

Because of the adventure on Friday, I spent several hours Saturday morning emptying bags full of a week’s worth of food waste that I’d not been able to do on Friday. In the chilly 36 degree rain!  🌧 It was a job that needed to be done, but at least it wasn’t snowing!

And the chickens now will have lots of yummy goodies to eat! 

While out there, I discovered several bags of garbage from sorting through the food waste and compostables that had been ripped open and contents spread out! So I raked that up and put the bags in the F150 truck. 

Part of the reason I wasn’t able to take care of the  food waste early in the week was the F150 had been filled with returnable bottles and cans. And because the Dodge Ram was being repaired, I couldn’t take them to the “Can Man”. But he was able to come pick them up. He then counted them (3,595) & that money will be used for Delhi Community Compost. Which is great timing as we needed to make modifications to our leaf chipper/ vacuum as it’s been clogged up with wet leaves. And since it’s been raining like every few days, it’s been making leaf collection very hard! 

Well, I better stop writing and get back to housework!